A. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electronic commerce and, more particularly, to methods and apparatus for the online sale and distribution of information corresponding to portions of printed articles.
B. Description of the Related Art
Publishers of newspapers, magazines, and the like that gather and distribute information waste tremendous amounts of information daily by not distributing some of the information due to limitations on the space available for a particular article or story. They invest vast amounts of money and time in gathering the information. As the space limitations increase, however, those investments in information gathering fail to provide an adequate return because much of the information cannot be used. In other words, if the publishers cannot include information in the media for which they receive compensation from readers, they are unable to capitalize on the expenditures associated with gathering that information. There is thus a need for techniques to permit the publishers to obtain a return on the enormous investment associated with the gathering of information that they cannot currently include in the media for which they receive compensation.
Computer online services provide the basis of a growing market for electronic commerce and, in particular, the sale of information. Perhaps the best known example of this is the Lexis/Nexis.RTM. service that controls terabytes of data contained in hundreds of databases, and makes the data available for sale.
Until recently, access to online services was relatively expensive, both due to high access charges and high equipment costs. As a result, online information purchases were primarily practiced by corporate, government and professional users. The dramatic success of consumer online services such as America Online and CompuServe, as well as the explosive growth of the Internet, now makes information sales to millions of consumers a potentially viable and profitable market. Though problems remain with the ability of websites to levy charges for small packets of information, millions of consumers already use online services to tap into databases and find useful information stored within them.
Many companies possess large amounts of information as an integral part of their business. Naturally, these companies are always searching for new ways to derive revenue from that information. In much the same way that telephone companies have learned to derive substantial directory assistance revenues simply by providing "pay-per-lookup" access to their databases of customers and associated telephone numbers, companies who have large storehouses of data want to design practical systems for selling access to such data.
The desire to capitalize on the value locked within their information base is especially important to companies who collect, edit, package and distribute data as their primary business purpose, such as the news media. Due to advances in computer technology, news organizations store almost all written information gathered as part of the news process in digital form on computer systems with substantial storage capacities. Frequently, news organizations also store audio and visual information, such as tape recordings, pictures, and video, related to a given story in digital databases.
Moreover, searching online databases is now an integral part of the research done in the preparation of news story. Reporters worldwide, whether they work for newspapers, magazines, newsletters, wire services or radio or TV stations, typically use computers to gather and evaluate relevant information for eventual editing and dissemination.
Computers make it fast, easy, and inexpensive to gather and store large amounts of material relevant to a single story. As a result, most companies who collect and distribute editorial information, such as news stories, generate at great expense far more finished material than they disseminate in the "news-hole" for that particular story. It is axiomatic that the total information gathered for a given story always far exceeds the standard-length or space allocated for the distribution of the story. Writers, and more frequently editors, must cut and condense each story in a never ending battle to make it fit within the finite amount of available space. The space can take the form of air time, as is the case for TV and radio, or column inches on a printed page, as is the case with magazines, newspapers, newsletters, etc.
Information gathered and not published for a given story can best be characterized as surplus information. For typical news media, such surplus information has little value beyond simply storing it in an archive for possible future use.
For online services, however, the situation of surplus information is very different. Because online services have a "news-hole" limited solely by electronic storage space, and because the cost to store information in digital format is extremely low, online services can provide access to the total information they gather on a given story and derive revenue from the total story. Online services have no surplus information that they have paid to gather but cannot at least attempt to sell. Their only economic limitation is the number of subscribers who can find the information and deem it valuable.
Users of online services often enjoy a second significant advantage. Typically, hyperlink connections exist within articles stored in databases. These links allow users interested in more information about a specific text passage to jump directly from that passage to another location for relevant information. Thus, online users can create and follow unanticipated paths of information retrieval that allow them to better accomplish their information-gathering objectives.
The subscribers of offline information services are thus at a significant disadvantage compared to users of online services. They lack access to the surplus information and they lack an ability to locate information related to the story they are reading or viewing quickly and easily.
Publishers, specifically those using printed forms of information, have begun to develop limited ways to allow their readers access to supplemental information remotely stored in electronic form. They sometimes provide access via footnote-like codes, such as Internet website addresses. In some cases, publishers derive added revenue by providing access to supplemental information. In other cases, publishers provide access to supplemental information to enhance the total reader value of a media package.
For example, readers of magazines such as Internet World often find website addresses at the end of articles with a notation that readers can visit the websites to learn additional information. In some cases, publishers incorporate the website addresses within the body of the articles, especially when the articles refer to a service which is itself website-based.
Newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal.RTM. produce an electronic version of the newspaper that users can access via the Internet. The primary advantage of this service is that users can retrieve previously published articles.
Wired.RTM. magazine has gone a step further in offering supplemental editorial information to its readers. For example, in a recent article discussing a writer's interview with a specific person, the magazine offered the full text of the interview to subscribers. Computer users with Internet access could visit the Wired.RTM. website for the full text of the interview available at no charge to users. Those without Internet access, however, had no way to access the supplemental information.
Systems currently exist which use indicia, specifically code numbers, that appear on the printed page and provide readers with instructions on how to access supplemental information electronically without the need for a computer, Internet access, or an online connection. For example, an advertisement for medical information produced by Medical Information Line lists various medical topics with associated code numbers. According to this system, the reader calls a special 900 number, enters the code number for the topic of interest, and listens to a three-minute prerecorded article covering the topic. The reader's telephone bill is billed for the cost of the article.
Other forms of advertising, specifically trade magazine advertising, incorporate another form of information request code within their advertisements. These code numbers, assigned by the magazine in which the advertisement appears, are so-called reader service numbers. A reader selects from a list of such numbers on a special postcard in the magazine and mails the postcard to the publisher who notifies each of the selected advertisers that the reader desires more information.
Fax-on-demand services provide a faster version of a reader service system. With fax-on-demand, a reader can call a telephone number in an advertisement and indicate a desire to have additional information immediately sent to him at a telephone number designated for a facsimile machine. In some cases, the reader can navigate lists of possible choices using an interactive voice response unit (IVRU) to specify products or services about which he is interested in receiving more information.
Individual Inc. offers another type of service where a one- or two-page document containing a few dozen news article abstracts is faxed to subscribers each day. The abstracts are based on search parameters set by the subscriber. A service scans tens of thousands of articles each day to select those articles that, based on their keyword content, might be of interest to the subscriber. A code number appended to the end of each abstract provides the subscriber access to the complete article. To obtain the article, the subscriber merely calls a telephone number, and enters an ID code and the code number for the abstract of interest. The service then sends the article by facsimile machine and, in some cases, charges the user an additional cost for complete article.
Fortune magazine provides a similar advertising-driven, fax-on-demand service that enables subscribers to obtain company information. Subscribers can call a telephone number and request company information, SEC filings, or certain articles on any of thousands of public companies. The service then immediately sends the requested information to the reader by facsimile machine. The reader must know only the company's stock ticker symbol in order to be able to use this type of IVRU-based system to identify and request the information he seeks.
Classified advertisement audio codes are another way to receive supplemental information. Some newspapers allow consumers who place classified personal advertisements to record a brief message for anyone who wants to listen. Each classified advertisement includes a printed code number that the reader keys into his telephone after calling an IVRU system at the newspaper. The newspapers typically charge the advertiser an additional fee for using this enhanced service.
These systems can be classified into four categories: (1) advertisers who incorporate code numbers in advertisements that readers use to request certain information at no charge; (2) advertisers who incorporate code numbers to allow readers to purchase information; (3) editorial information that allows the reader to purchase the full text of an abstract which was originally provided; (4) editorial information for which supplemental information is provided free. All of these system share the same disadvantage. Specifically, they fail to provide a simple and economical facility for publishers to distribute and to derive added revenue for supplemental information related to printed information.
It is therefore desirable to seek techniques that can provide those that gather information for newspapers, magazines, and the like to distribute and to benefit financially from the distribution of surplus information related to information appearing in print and other media. Such gatherers typically have limited space to disseminate information via traditional avenues such as print media This limitation may be due primarily to the cost of the particular media, although production costs may also play a role. As a result, information gatherers currently waste the surplus information by not disseminating it and reaping financial benefits associated with distributing information in available media.